Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/417

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Oct.]
OF LA PEROUSE.
389

them together, and form a firm contexture of the whole.[1]

To clear the fæculæ of the sago of the ligneous fibres which still remain, after having been washed in the sacks or bags, it is again put into troughs, commonly four in number, and arranged; one higher than the other; so that what is not deposited in the first, may be received into the second, and so on.

The texture of the sago tree well deserves examination, and therefore I dissected the trunk of one, in which I observed the conformation of parts common to many other species of palms, as Citizen Desfontaines has so well described, in a memoir on plants with seminal leaves.

6th and 7th. I could not go any great distance from the town on the two following days, on account of the assiduous care necessary to preserve my collections. An intelligent assistant to each naturalist, would have saved that precious time,

  1. The reader will observe, that the kind of searce here described, is merely a natural production, which is not over plainly intimated by the Author. They are commonly called by the English cocoa-nut strainers. They resemble fragments of very coarse brown linen, but are not so pliable. If I rightly remember, they are from two to three feet in length, and where broadest, which is about the middle, from a foot to about fifteen inches in breadth.—Translator.

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